Supports

Supports are necessary for printing parts in a majority of cases, as overhanging features on your part won’t print successfully without them. 

Make sure you position and scale your part as intended before generating supports. Rotating the part or scaling your part will force the regeneration of supports.

Support Presets

In the Support menu, you’ll find options to change the Strength and Density of your supports.

• Strength entails the thickness of the beam and size of the touch points. The Default setting will vary depending on the type of material you’re printing with.

  • Low will make the beams thinner and decrease the size of the touch points relative to the Default settings.

  • Conversely, High will thicken the beams and increase the size of the touch points relative to the Default Settings.

• Density entails the amount of supports generated. As with Strength, the Default will vary depending on the type of material you’re printing with. You can adjust the Density to High, Medium, and Low to adjust the amount of supports generated.

In most cases the Default presets will work fine for both strength and density. However, you may want to modify the strength or density in certain cases.

Auto-Generate Supports (to All)

Clicking this button will automatically generate the scaffolding for your part based off the presets defined above. 

Edit (All)

When you click Edit All, the Edit Supports sub-menu will appear. This sub-menu allows you to add, replace or modify specific support points for your scaffold. You can either choose to add points manually without the need of auto-generated scaffolding or you can edit points created by the auto-generating feature after it has completed.  

The Contact Thickness slider allows you to define the size of your support touch points, as well as the thickness of the support beam. To manually edit the size and placement of the supports:

• Click Edit All to enter editing mode

• While in editing mode, click anywhere on the model to add a touch point with the thickness defined by the Contact Thickness slider. A white dot will appear to indicate where the support will be generated

• The point will turn yellow when the cursor hovers over it. In order to change the size of an existing support point, adjust the Contact Thickness slider to the desired size, and click over the existing specific point to modify

• To completely remove a support, simply right click the touch point while in editing mode

Brush Remove Tool

The Brush Remove Tool allows the user to drag the cursor over the part and delete all support points within a certain radius of the cursor. The radius of the brush can be modified with either the slider or text field under Brush Tool Radius. 

Clear (All)

This button will delete any scaffolding and cone supports that have already been generated for the selected part. 

Settings

This button will pull up an advanced scaffold support settings menu that will present different support parameters for your desired results.

Click Apply to finalize the changes, but there are also options to Cancel and Reset the changes.

Array Duplication

Parts can be duplicated in the X, Y, and Z directions for stacking the plate with multiple models.

Z-Stacking Models

1. Select the model you want to duplicate

2. Select the Array Duplication Tool on the left toolbar. The layout menu will pop up but it will be greyed out unless you select a model

3. Use the + button to increase the model count in each direction and adjust the spacing as needed. Use the "Alternate Flip" switch if you'd like for the models to alternate in direction when duplicating

4. Click duplicate to finalize the process

• Once you select a model, you will be able to change the following parameters for the X, Y, and Z-Axes:
  • Count - entails the number of parts
  • Spacing - entails the spacing between the two models' adjacent edges (bounding-box based) in millimeters. It is recommended you leave at least 10mm of spacing.
  • Be sure to press Duplicate to apply the changes! 

Updated November 01, 2022 14:58